This invention relates to musical instrument components and more particularly to a plastic body for a solid body electric guitar or similar instrument.
Bodies for solid body electric guitars, electric basses and similar instruments have heretofore normally been formed from a solid piece of wood or by laminating together several pieces of wood. In order to obtain a quality acoustic response and an aesthetically pleasing appearance, it has been necessary to use fairly high quality grades of maple, mahogany and other hard woods for these guitar bodies and there has been significant amounts of time and labor in carving the wood to the proper shape and dimensions, routing or otherwise forming recesses to receive pickups and other electronic hardware, staining and finishing the instrument, polishing the instrument and the like. Many of these steps are most advantageously performed by hand making it difficult to adopt low-cost mass production techniques to the manufacture of these bodies. The resulting high cost of these bodies has been a significant factor in the increased prices for quality electric solid body guitars. Another disadvantageous characteristic of wood when used as a guitar body is that it is subject to warping or cracking and to general deterioration as a result of age and as a result of changes in temperature, humidity, weather and other environmental conditions.
In an effort to reduce the cost of guitar bodies and to overcome the other problems indicated above, efforts have been made to cast or mold guitar bodies out of various plastic materials. While the cost of the plastic is as high or higher than that of wood, there is significantly less labor involved in molding a guitar body as compared to conventionally forming the same body out of wood. However, efforts to mold guitar bodies from plastic materials have presented a number of problems. A typical electric guitar has six strings which may be strung to a tension of about 120 lbs. If the plastic is made hard enough so as not to bow under this tension, the plastic is frequently brittle and the instrument susceptible to breakage. If a softer, more durable plastic is used, the body tends to bow slightly under string tension making it impossible to keep the instrument in tune. It is also difficult to anchor the screws securing the neck, tail piece, and bridge to the body in certain plastics resulting in these elements being pulled loose under string tension.
Another problem with plastic guitar bodies is to obtain from them the tone, resonent and sustain characteristics of a wooden body. Since musicians are accustomed to the sound characteristics of a wooden guitar body, any instrument that did not sound the same as, or similar to a wood-body instrument would not be acceptable to the playing public. While an all plastic body can have many of the same sound characteristics as a wooden body, it is difficult to get it to have all of the same tonal characteristics.
Another problem in molding guitar bodies is that the plastic shrinks as it cures. While the amount of this shrinkage is reasonably predictable, there are certain variations which result in slight dimensional instability in the resulting parts. This can cause problems when the bodies are to be mated with other components such as pickups and necks.